


At the End of the Rope

by Lies_Unfurl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 00:31:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lies_Unfurl/pseuds/Lies_Unfurl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naomi presents Castiel with an impossible task. He finds a way out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the End of the Rope

"Kill the Winchesters."

Castiel stares at the angel in front of him. He doesn't think he's heard her words right. He can't have, because if he did, then he's just been giving an impossible order. "What?"

"You heard me." She –Naomi, he remembers; her name is Naomi and she has made him do so, so many terrible things that he wishes he had never done – rises from her desk. Her agitation is palpable, and the raw power that flickers around her makes the air in the room crackle. "They have learned about the angel tablet, Castiel. They'll turn around and lock all of us in Heaven, so that we may never carry out our Father's work. You must stop them before it is too late."

"No." He stares up at her, still feeling shock and numbness more than anything. "I – I can’t. The Winchesters are good people; they're my friends—"

"Are they?" In a single movement she is looming over him, and suddenly he's back to before, when there was something drilling through his true form to get to the power coiled in his wings and in his limbs, inside his very essence. He remembers the raw pain of something twisting the strands of his very being, reweaving them into something that he didn't want to be.

"Do you think you are exempt from the powers of the tablet? Do you think that the Winchesters are under the illusion that the ritual with somehow imprison every angel but the one who has deluded himself into thinking that they care for him?" Her wings flare out behind her, sharp and so bright that they leave spots in Castiel's vision. "You're wrong. They'll throw you away just as they will me, and Ezrael, and Azariah, and every one of us that's left. You must kill them Castiel."

A headache starts to pound behind his eyes, and he recognizes what it means – that he is going to obey, even though every single bit of his being is screaming protests, even though there is absolutely no part of him that wants to do this. The headache means that he is going to act as Naomi's puppet, and the Winchesters are going to die, and he doesn't have a choice—

Castiel starts to rise, feels his wings unfurl against his will, preparing for a flight to Earth. He is a second away from leaving Heaven, probably minutes away from killing the two best men the world has ever known when he looks back at Naomi and realizes how foolish he's being.

Because (and Castiel thinks this is a fundamental truth, albeit one he's been blind to for most of his existence) there is always, always a choice. No exceptions. Even if the choice is between living or dying, it is still there, because the whole point, the whole meaning behind this grand game, is that humans and angels and everything else that lives are supposed to choose. They are supposed to make their own paths based on their own decisions, and there is never a point at which there is no decision, because that would mean that God had cleared the path already, and Castiel knows for certain that the Lord is not in the habit of doing that.

A minute before he acts, an old thought, created in a different, but no less desperate time springs to Castiel's mind—

Freedom is a length of rope. God wants you to hang yourself with it.

He can feel the noose tightening around his neck now as he stills his wings and looks at Naomi. She does not recoil, and he is sitting on a high-up tree branch, watching the world go by beneath him, waiting for the right moment to fling himself from his perch.

"What are you doing?" she snaps. "I gave you an order. Kill the Winchesters."

His nose is bleeding; he blinks, and his vision temporarily blurs because of the liquid pooling in his eyes. The pain inside him as he stands and watches her is beyond measure, like a thousand knives with barbed blades all twisting in different directions.

He stands on the branch, hands pressed against the trunk. The rope chafes his neck, but that doesn't really matter, because it will be over soon.

Castiel meets Naomi's eyes. He could probably read a thousand things in them – confusion, doubt, anger, wrath – but the wind is blowing, ordering him to go, and he just doesn't have time for that.

"No," he says, and for a very brief second, he thinks of Anna as he reaches inside himself, wraps his hand around his Grace, and pulls, tearing and snapping the threads that make him. It's like an inferno has erupted in his chest, self-destruct mode going off. Naomi screams and covers her eyes as he burns, and it hurts like nothing has ever hurt before, but he has made his choice, and he knows that this path is a thousand times better than the one that he would have gone down if he had killed the Winchesters.

The air rushes past Castiel, and he can no longer feel the noose as he plummets down to Earth.


End file.
